Leprosy News

THURSDAY, Oct. 15, 2015 – In a step toward giving prosthetic limbs a sense of touch, scientists have developed an artificial skin that can "feel" pressure and send those signals to brain cells. Reporting in the Oct. 16 issue of Science, researchers say the plastic skin mimics the ability of human skin to tell the difference between a firm handshake and the dead-fish variety. It can then transmit ...

THURSDAY, June 13 – A close look at some very old bones is shedding light on the elimination of leprosy in Europe, where it was a major scourge until medieval times. Leprosy was common across medieval Europe and nearly one in 30 people are thought to have had the disease. However, while it is still endemic in many parts of the world today – affecting over 200,000 people across the globe – ...

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 19 – Ohio doctors report they got a diagnostic surprise when an HIV patient tested positive for the bacterium that causes leprosy. What was even more surprising was that the initial infection most likely occurred decades earlier, from exposure to an armadillo. Soon after starting treatment for the HIV infection, the Ohio man developed lesions on his skin that didn't respond to ...

WEDNESDAY, April 27 – The prehistoric-looking armadillo, already the state animal of Texas, now has a new claim to fame: leprosy. A new study finds that armadillos carry the bacterium that causes leprosy, and have somehow passed the disease to several dozen humans in the southern United States. "We've confirmed a long-suspected link between leprosy in humans and armadillos," said the study's ...